Middleware Support for Precise Failure Semantics

Definition

Providing support for precise failure semantics requires defining an appropriate correctness criterion for replicated action execution of a replication algorithm. Such a correctness criterion allows formally verifying that a sequence of actions is executed correctly. In the context of replication, a sequence of actions executed is correctly if their side-effect appears to have happened exactly-once.

Historical Background

Reasoning about the behavior of concurrent programs has been an active research area during the past decades. Of particular interest in this area are the works on linearizability, a consistency criterion for concurrent objects [4], and on serializability, a consistency criterion for concurrent transactions [5]. These two criteria facilitate certain kinds of formal reasoning by transforming assertions about complex concurrent behavior into assertions about simpler sequential behavior. Moreover, these consistency criteria are local properties: the correctness...